re:mote voices

Title: The System Of The World

Author: Neal Stephenson

Publisher: William Heinemann

The System Of The World is the third and final volume of the Baroque Cycle, which appears in hardback just as the first volume of the Baroque Cycle – Quicksilver – has made it’s way to paperback. As a trilogy this sequence of books acts as a prequel to his previous novel Cryptonomicon. Where Cryptonomicon followed the paths of the Shaftoe and Waterhouse families through World War II and the present day, the Baroque novels extend those families backwards through time to the point where the original “cryptonomicon” was written by a prominent scientist.

Quicksilver starts in the year 1713, with Daniel Waterhouse in America being visited by Enoch Root the Alchemist, to be summoned back to Europe by Royalty to mediate to some degree in a dispute between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who created Calculus. With this Quicksilver flashes back in time, following the life of Daniel Waterhouse and the rise of Natural Philosophy. Intermingled with that we are introduced to Jack Shaftoe as he rises from mudlark to mercenary to kind of the Vagabonds, and in the process rescues a slave girl called Eliza. The adventures of these two become the greater focus of the second book in the series The Confusion. All of which leads to The System Of The World and Daniel Waterhouse’s return to Britain.

With the result that The System Of The World is perhaps the most compact and well paced of the three novels. The three main characters all now find themselves in London (for the most part), and the stage is set. Jack despite turning his back on Eliza is still in love with her, and finds himself forced to undermine his own country in the process. Eliza has clawed her way up from humble slave girl to Duchess, having gone through the courts of France, The Netherlands, and becoming a key adviser to the Hanoverians. While Waterhouse seeks to create his first logic mill, deal with the calculus debate, and finds himself caught up in the consistent financial issues that have been at the heart of the Baroque Cycle.

With The System Of The World we still have the world stage to some degree which has informed so much of events to this point. Particularly here, William of Orange has been replaced as monarch of Britain by Queen Anne, and the war for the Spanish throne has come to an end. But Anne is old and there is some confusion as to who will succeed her – will it be the Catholic Jacobite Tories or the Protestant Hanoverian Whigs? This question is one of the big features The System Of The World – with the connections Daniel Waterhouse has made over the years tending to be Whigs, even if he hadn’t actually met with the Hanoverian’s who are the sponsors of Leibniz. At the same time his old friend Isaac Newton is now the Master of the Mint, and is at war with Jack Shaftoe – a struggle which becomes entangled with that for the power of government and from there monarchy.

Both Quicksilver and The Confusion have their strengths. There are some great chunks of text which are the sort of brilliance one would expect from Neal Stephenson. In the process of the Baroque Cycle his characters travel the world, and so many historical events are covered in the period of 1655 to 1715, which the three books cover, either peripherally or from the direct experiences of the characters. The rise of natural philosophy, a point from which so much of our modern science originates. The rise and fall of monarchies across Europe. The trade routes around the world, slaves sold from one tribe by another, to work the gold mines of South America, to fund Spanish wars.

However each of the books is about 800-900 pages each, and in the process Stephenson at times can overwhelm the reader with detail and tangents and the like. Pages of letters sent back and forth between players, which are encrypted within the most mundane details. With The Confusion in particular there also becomes a certain repetition as we fall the trials and tribulations of Shaftoe, a point Stephenson acknowledges himself as Shaftoe explains his life to someone in The System.

The result, to some degree, is that the first two novels can be considered as the set up. Fleshing out the lives of the characters and the history of the world in this period. Such that The System Of The World is a much more focussed novel, more compact in a narrative sense as it pursues the conclusion of all that has gone before. Daniel Waterhouse is the main character and really comes in to his own with this novel, being forced to shake of the passivity and cowardice which have described his past. Waterhouse is a witness, through his life he has been there at great events – the births and deaths of kings, the great plague and the great fire, the rebuilding of London, the creation of calculus, the rise and fall of government. But through all that, for me, he has felt too secondary to events, while he comes more to the fore. Inside his mind we still have this vision of a coward, particularly now – an old coward. But we are also given the sight of how other people see him, the ideas they have carried away from meeting him and the events he has lived through. And in some ways that is where he really starts to shine.

Of course The System Of The World is littered with characters that have popped up throughout the Baroque Cycle, as how could they not, what with the web that Stephenson weaves? Additionally there are another stream of new characters. All of whom together, for the most part push along the action in this novel at a greater rate than that encountered in the previous novels. Tangents are present – the first encounter with Princess Caroline initially feels like a divergence, and the debate between Newton and Leibniz certainly stalls momentum. Regardless The System Of The World is a solid piece of work, which builds on the groundwork of it’s predecessors.

As a whole The Baroque Cycle is a sprawling epic undertaking, which approximates 3000 pages in the end. Covering 60 odd years in the process, but coming to a point with The System Of The World, where the time covers the period of a year and reaches the culmination of these events. Leaving the future open, such that it can tie into Cryptonomicon, with which there are numerous connections scattered throughout the cycle. No doubt reading all four books in close proximity would uncover all the connections, which I no doubt missed having not read Cryptonomicon since it’s release some 5-6 years ago.

With Quicksilver and The Confusion I have expressed doubts, but by the time I reach The System Of The World I find either that I have become absorbed in the Baroque Cycle or that events have reached a point where it all just falls into place, or perhaps both. Regardless I enjoyed The System Of The World a lot, and I felt satisfied.